ART SCHOOLS

Contents

There are four major art schools in New Zealand, two being
university schools and two associated with the technical
colleges in Wellington and Dunedin under the control of the
Department of Education. Many secondary schools throughout
the country provide art courses and in the smaller centres
art classes for adults are provided, mainly in the evenings.
Art classes for day students in High Schools and Technical
Colleges must be fitted in to a curriculum governed by School
Certificate and University Entrance requirements, and
anything like a complete art course cannot be provided. There
is frequently close cooperation with local art societies and
clubs, and valuable though unspectacular results are
achieved. There are no private art schools of importance and
very few private art teachers.

Candidates for the art schools have had, therefore, little
preparatory training. The Fine Arts Preliminary examination,
a prerequisite for the university schools, is elementary, and
cannot be compared with the normal University Entrance
requirements. Much of the usual three-year course is thus, of
necessity, devoted to bringing students up to the standard
which would be required for admission to one of the overseas
schools or colleges. The recent appointments of professors of
fine art at Auckland and Christchurch could well mean a
thorough revision of the present unsatisfactory
situation.

Art is a lively subject in our primary schools. Art
training is part of the normal course at teachers' colleges
and there are opportunities for suitable students to
undertake an extension course for specialist art teachers.
Robert Donn, a Scot trained in Glasgow who taught at
teachers' colleges in Dunedin and Auckland, was one of the
first to lift the teaching of art in schools from the
doldrums into high favour, and his pioneering work has been
developed by a number of gifted artist-teachers, the majority
recruited from overseas.

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How to cite this page: 'ART SCHOOLS', from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966.Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New ZealandURL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/1966/art-schools (accessed 26 May 2019)